Kelly McParland: Canada's so silly we can't make money off oil or drugs

Canada must be the only country in the world that has legal marijuana and an abundance of oil, but can’t make a go of either of them.

Lots of other people find it easy to make money off drugs. Criminals are great at it. The business was so sure-fire, flourishing all over Canada, we were told it had to be legalized to bring it under control. Well, I guess that worked: now there’s a shortage of the stuff and Ottawa is busy carping about municipalities that don’t want pot shops anywhere within their boundaries.

And oil. It’s hard NOT to make money off oil. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, contains US$1 trillion from oil earnings. The fund is such a big deal in Norway it has its own TV show, a situation comedy about the clash between high finance and inbred Nordic moderation. Oil is the sole reason the Middle East is awash with ridiculously rich petro-princes, hereditary monarchs and heirs-to-the-throne so brazen they feel safe ordering the dismembering of inconvenient journalists.

Oil is the sole reason the Middle East is awash with ridiculously rich petro-princes

Corrupt politicians around the world have grown fat on their pilferings from oil. Not in Canada. In Canada, the oil business has been so profoundly botched by political interference that the federal government felt compelled Tuesday to offer $1.6 billion in aid to an industry struggling to keep its head above water.

“Today, our government is taking critical next steps with new measures to protect and promote Canada’s natural advantage,” intoned International Trade Diversification Minister Jim Carr. “Measures that reflect our belief that Alberta’s energy sector is not just the historic backbone of our economy but a key part of our country’s future.”

Carr’s announcement is itself an illustration of how cockeyed Canada’s treatment of its energy industry has become. If oil is a “natural advantage,” why on earth does it require federal measures to “protect and promote it?” It’s like Gary Bettman declaring special protection for the Stanley Cup champions because they have too many good players. How many other countries do you know that can hail “the historic backbone of our economy,” and at the same time toss it five bucks so it can get itself a sandwich?

Rachel Notley sniffed out this paradox right off the bat. Noting that the money is mostly loans, she grumbled: “We didn’t ask for the opportunity to go further into debt as a means of addressing this problem.”

Carr maintained Alberta’s struggle to make money from one of the world’s most sought-after commodities is mostly about “liquidity.” But it’s much, much more than that. It’s about the Liberal government’s adoption of policies so counter to national interests that no one wants to risk building a pipeline that might alleviate the yawning gap between world oil prices and the price Alberta gets. It’s about an Ottawa so clueless about the asset Canada enjoys that it’s continuing to push legislation that will further raise the bar the industry must clear for future projects, at a time it can’t even meet existing restrictions. It’s about a country that has allowed the culture of disdain for its “natural advantage” grow so rampant that the mayor of Whistler — who makes his living running a limo service from Vancouver to the ski slopes — thinks it’s the producers, not wasteful consumers like himself, who are to blame for the problems of climate change. If Whistler closed down its hot tubs, heated sidewalks and SUVs from the airport, it would do a whole lot more to reduce emissions than demanding money from executives in Calgary.

This is about Liberal government policies so counter to national interests that no one wants to risk building a pipeline

While his trade minister was spreading promises around Edmonton, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was doing a round of year-end interviews in which he attributed the perplexing shortage of marijuana supply to municipal leaders who don’t want pot stores in their jurisdictions.

“There was … so much resistance to it from the local political classes, from, you know, the chattering classes,” he told a radio interviewer. “They were caught flat-footed without enough of a supply.”

I wasn’t aware the chattering classes opposed legal cannabis. I always thought they were a Liberal support group. If the prime minister wants to believe his signature policy has been foiled by an elite group of wealthy urbanites, he’s free to do so. Border guards, helicopters, international anti-drug agencies and all the resources billions of dollars in government funding could buy had such little impact against criminal drug lords that governments like Canada’s threw up their hands and legalized the stuff. But now a little resistance from a few municipal mayors is all it takes to bring the great pot parade screeching to a halt. That’s some bad mother chatter.

There was ... so much resistance to it from ... the chattering classes

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Khurram Malik, head of a Toronto-based cannabis company, told The Canadian Press that the real causes of the supply problem are Health Canada’s prohibitive regulations and languid licensing practices. In any case, the Liberals have had three years to plan, prepare and co-ordinate legalization, all the time insisting they were acting on the people’s will. Now the people don’t want pot shops in their neighbourhoods? How does that work?

This government has trouble getting things right. A few more weeks of Ottawa’s expertise and the Liberals might have to scratch up another $1.6 billion to assist struggling drug dealers. You can just imagine the chatter that would produce.

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